Breathe
by TigerxFox
Summary: Zoro erased all the remnants of Sanji from his memory through a treatment. At least that's what they promised. (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind-ish AU (procedure rather different from the movie))


They told him to breathe. A distant, calm, velvety voice told him that over and over again. He inhaled and exhaled deeply, his lungs feeling lighter than he remembered now. He was on a stretcher and some doctors were watching him. They showed him a few million photos and asked if he recognized anything. The answer was no every time. Zoro left the clinic feeling absolutely…Ordinary. He couldn't remember exactly what he had gone there to do, although the doctors told him it was a dermatology appointment or something, and that was expected, after all it was part of the treatment. The fact is that Zoro had gone there precisely to erase his memory. When he asked them, they assured him that it would erase any memory related to the person he wanted, with no trace and no chance of turning back, the success rate of the treatment was 100%. And so, it was done.

He came home and looked at his place. The small apartment was in chaos. As if some natural disaster had happened inside, as if his living room were the epicentre of an earthquake. Bottles of cheap drink strewn about in every room. Okay, Zoro might like drinking a little more than most people do, but that was a bit over the top. He couldn't remember it right, maybe he'd got really drunk, anyway. The most troublesome was fixing all that mess, not its reasons.

Later, after more or less cleaning the apartment, he lay down to sleep. However, he felt something bothering his back. It was a button. The button of a jacket. Zoro stared at the garment for a few seconds trying to recognize it, unsuccessfully. It seemed at least a number smaller than his, and he had no suit other than the one that... someone had given him, though he didn't exactly remember who. Sleep was already pressing his eyelids against each other and he shrugged. However, when he dropped the jacket, he noticed that he smelled cigarettes. He picked up the piece again and sniffed cautiously: the clothes smelled like an ashtray. It was as if a whole pack of cigarettes had been erased there. Zoro found the smell oddly... pleasant? He could have sworn he hated that pungent scent for most of his life, why did it seem so good and familiar? Maybe it was because it was indeed mixed with another smell…He stopped sniffing the suit before he felt even creepier and went to sleep. He was still confused, but he was lucky that his algae brain could fall asleep in seconds.

The other day, he woke up earlier than usual and had breakfast. He felt like he was forgetting something. He checked his messages, there were some from last night that had not yet been answered, nothing much. Zoro spent time pretending that he was going to choose something to watch on netflix and left to work when the time finally came.

Lunch time. Zoro automatically went to where he always had lunch, an alley next to a famous restaurant. He sat up and opened his package of "any piece of crusty bread there was with anything that was inside the fridge." While he ate his "lunch" he did not seem to be very satisfied, his expression of a huge monotony and his stomach still complaining even while being fed. Not that Zoro was over-demanding with his taste buds, food is food. But... there was something strange. As if he remembered that it should be different somehow.

He spent so much time reflecting that he ended up falling asleep, typical of him. And he dreamed. He saw himself from the outside, his other self was on the same bench, in exactly the same situation as his lunch minutes ago. Except it wasn't the same situation. He had a half-smile, the one he gave when he didn't want to fully demonstrate, even though he was completely happy, one could notice. The flash in his eyes did not deny the feeling, it seemed that he was in love with the bento in his hands. Why the hell was he being so stupid over food?... Well, it sure looked good though... and so familiar... Zoro could swear he knew exactly what the taste of that bento was and it was the best in the world. He woke up confused, saliva dripping on the corner of his mouth and his stomach rumbling, as well as slightly late to get back to work. Fortunately, the path to that alley next to the restaurant was one of the only ones the lost moss had memorized by heart.

And speaking of heart, his missed a beat when, on his way home, Zoro stopped to watch the ocean. He sat and watched the waves crashing on the beach. The colour was... so beautiful. But it didn't make any sense. No matter how beautiful a colour is it should not be enough to make a heart beat faster. Smells, flavours and colours accelerating and warming one's heart. Since when was he such a retard? He continued to stare at the clear water, as if to get answers. And the colour was really beautiful. So much that he wanted to dive in. It reminded him of a pair of equally beautiful, equally deep, equally blue eyes. And below the eyes there was a sweet smile in a beautiful mouth, though quite dirty. All of that on a soft face that angered in two seconds depending on the severity of one's provocation. Him. Sanji.

How could he forget? The doctors might even think this was possible and brag about their impeccable success rate but how could he think a machine could erase him if he used to think about the man 24 hours a day? And when he did not think, he dreamed. Everything in his world revolved around him. As if the very air he breathed was infested with him. It was the natural course of things, trying to stop it would be as if someone had tried to stop the Earth from spinning around the sun. All it took was one day for his thoughts to go right back to him.

He wanted to give as much love as he could every second. And say shameful things. But he would not say them, of course. So, he just tried to convey his love in any way he could. As if, in the midst of so many curses, his looks, concern and care could be understood as "I love you." He never complimented Sanji's food, but he never left a crumb in his lunches, and in that, in his sparkling eyes and in his face clearly trying to keep himself from falling apart with pleasure, one could also read "I love you."

By God, just the mere memory of him made him happy already. He felt as if he would implode with love. Why on earth would he want to forget that?

Then, just as he was about to pick up the cell phone to talk to the blond, Zoro remembered the last time he had spoken to him and why it had been the last. The reason was that the sunshine had gone out. It all came back like a punch in the stomach, it was not fair. It was as if he had just discovered the best thing in his life, and it slipped between his fingers instantly.

The last time he spoke to him was a "good night." But what he really meant was "I love you." But, he would not say that, of course. The other day he discovered that he would indeed never say it: Sanji was dead, quietly infarcted in the middle of the night at his tender age, perhaps the price of so many cigarette packs.

Zoro vaguely remembered having taken one of the guy's suits in secret during the funeral. He remembered nights with swollen eyes in which he could scarcely smell anything at all with a runny, constipated nose, but still his face was buried in the fabric that smelled of him. Every fiber in that outfit had a little bit of it, and any trace was precious to Zoro at that moment.

His lungs seemed to be giving up on him and collapsing, because there was never enough of it, and no matter how hard he tried to take a deep breath, it would never be sufficient.


End file.
